Michelle Stack

The concept of international-mindedness (IM) is a key feature of all schools offering International Baccalaureate (IB) educational programmes. IM is acknowledged as an aim but realizing it in practice is a process fraught with tensions. This study explored one facet of IM: ethnocultural pluralism (an ethic of respect for ethnocultural diversity). Guided by Stuart Hall’s work on representation and Norman Fairclough’s dialectical-relational approach to Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), I analyzed sections of the official IB website and 89 Unit Planners from three schools implementing the Primary Years Programme (PYP) in Africa, the Middle East, and North America, representing the documented pedagogical plans and praxis of teachers of Grades 1 to 5 at each of these schools for the 2018-2019 academic year. The findings of the study indicate that although the IB has made strong statements of commitment in relation to ethnocultural pluralism, its practices do not always reflect enactment of these commitments. The findings further indicate that although all IB schools share this commitment to nurturing IM, there is a great deal of variance in the ways in which this is manifested in schools’ Unit Planners. Additionally, the extent to which, and manners in which, particular ethnocultural groups are included in the Planners draws attention to multilayered issues of representation. The comparative analysis of teachers’ representations of their pedagogical practices, as self-documented in their Unit Planners, generated a continuum of praxis reflecting a range of manners in which teachers at IB PYP schools in diverse geopolitical contexts conceptualize and enact IM and, by extension, ethnocultural pluralism. The meso and macro level contexts and their influences on teacher praxis are unpacked in light of the theoretical and analytical frameworks of this study. The contributions of this study include: deep insights into the PYP; a broader framework for conceptualizing teachers’ approaches for IM and ethnocultural pluralism; concrete examples of praxis for ethnocultural pluralism, including specifically for each of Grades 1 to 5; contributions to literature in overlapping domains; detailed exemplification of analytical processes involved in CDA, including visualizations to guide budding analysts; and a bespoke Analytical Guide for critical analysis of discourses.

View record

Collaboration is a messy, complicated, and socially constructed (Burr, 2015) practice, involving stakeholders from different organizations to purportedly achieve consensus on mutual aims. It is often presented as a seamless and productive practice of stakeholders negotiating different interests, values, and aims (Gray, 1989). At the same time, it is fraught with tensions and challenges related to varying power and capacities (Gray & Purdy, 2018; Phillips et al., 2000), interacting with the policies and politics in the ecosystem (Weaver-Hightower, 2008), which impacts both the stakeholder experiences and the overall aims of collaboration.This qualitative research study analyzes stakeholders’ experiences from non-profit and government organizations involved in collaboration in a geographically and culturally diverse community in Western Canada. The case, the Young Child project, studied from 2007 to 2011, is bounded (Yin, 2018). Using Gray and Purdy’s (2018) framework for power dynamics within collaboration, I analyze the variations of (a) different forms of power (authority, resources, and discursive power) and (b) power orientations (power over, power to, and power for) taken by stakeholders in their interactions with others.I analyze interview transcriptions, project and policy documents, media articles, and my reflexive journal to examine the multiple dimensions of power in collaboration. I explore three themes: how participants describe their experiences in the Young Child collaboration, what discourses they use to describe positionality, and how participant narratives and project documents reflect the intersection of power and democratic participation in collaboration.Based on my analysis, I argue that concerted time to develop relationships, role clarifications, and emotional connections to the issues at stake during the early stages of collaboration can mitigate abuses of power that can occur in the process. Additionally, I suggest that stakeholder participation defines and constructs collaboration and impacts how dynamics of power are navigated within informal and interactional spaces. I outline the relationship between the politics and policies within the defined collaboration and the surrounding ecosystem. Finally, I conclude that individual stories demonstrate hidden and implicit dynamics in collaboration. And stories also provide opportunities to improve the development of collaborative aims and the experiences of stakeholders involved in this practice.

View record

This research is presented as an autobiographical narrative inquiry about one teacher’s experience of living with mental illness. The main objective of this research is to contribute to expanding our understanding of how our education systems must include acceptance and inclusion of the large number of students, educators, school trustees, education bureaucrats, parents and administrators who live with mental illness. According to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, mental illness will impact one in two Canadians by age 40 with the onset of symptoms occurring during adolescence, making the school system an important public institution for recognizing and treating mental illness. Yet, there continues to be stigma and fear around mental illness, which may hinder peoples’ ability to recognize it in themselves or others. The autobiographical texts contained in this dissertation emerged as I, the researcher, examined my own context in relation to who I was as a researcher, and in particular, as an educational researcher, and specifically, as a teacher, and even more specifically, a teacher with mental illness. My particular illnesses were anxiety and eating disorders. The texts are a collection of stories, journal entries, and report card comments interspersed with and analyzed in relation to literature that includes academic theory, research, poetry, and fiction. I am following in the tradition of others such as Pelias (2016) who puts themselves on display as a researcher “in the belief that an emotionally vulnerable, linguistically evocative, and sensuously poetic voice can place us closer to the subjects we wish to study” (p. 1). In this study I put mental illness on display to examine it from the perspective of curiosity and openness rather than from a place of stigma or fear. I surmise that if a teacher’s educational responsibility is to be open to what Biesta (2013) pens is the call to act in the intervention of others, then one such act is showing up as a human being, with one’s struggles and vulnerabilities, and being open to those of others.

View record

This study explores faculty members’ lived experiences with digital technologies in their teaching practice at British Columbia University (BCU), and it investigates these individual experiences within overlapping and interrelated contexts at the global, provincial, and institutional scales.The study was inspired by the researcher’s practice in educational technology leadership at BCU and those experiences, along with the researcher’s perspective as geographer, are seen throughout the study.The research is informed by critical theory of technology to situate the different perspectives used to frame technologies. It draws upon research on globalization to analyze provincial and institutional policy documents. It also draws upon Bourdieu’s ideas on capital to understand power and influence shifts: particularly within the institution and how participants’ capital shifts over time.The study illustrates the complex and sometimes contradictory ways that faculty members see their relationship with digital technologies in their practice, and it highlights how government priorities can become institutional policy and ultimately manifest in faculty members experiences.The study shows how the role of the instructor and the field of higher education are changing, and it situates increasingly ubiquitous digital technologies in the change. It illustrates how participants attribute tensions in their practice to different logics between themselves and BCU administrators. And it shows how participants take on the responsibility themselves of increasing their use of digital technologies, even when they don’t believe more technology use will help their practice.This research contributes to the ongoing discussions regarding higher education policy and the roles for digital technologies within that field.

View record

This study explores the assumptions and understandings that English as an Additional Language (EAL) teachers bring to teaching students who they believe have experienced trauma. The instructors in this study teach in a Canadian federally funded program called Language Instruction Program for Newcomers (LINC). The research is informed by the critical literacy work of Paulo Freire, particularly his critique of the banking model of education and his work on dialogue and praxis. The work of Freire is considered in relation to larger conversations about social justice. The research draws on participatory action research. The study illustrates the complex and contradictory understanding that instructors have about trauma and the dilemmas they face in supporting students affected by trauma in a government-funded EAL program for newcomers. First, this project describes the multiple barriers students and instructors face in trying to create inclusive classrooms. Second, it demonstrates that instructors bring a variety of experiences, techniques and processes to support students who have experienced trauma. Third, it shows that for EAL programs to be responsive to the whole student requires a shift away from neo-liberal policy and practice. What is needed is a rethinking of current Professional Development (PD) practices, and active engagement through communities of practice are needed to enable EAL instructors to create more inclusive EAL education, particularly for students who have experienced trauma. This research contributes to the discussion on trauma and learning within government-funded EAL programs, specifically in relation to adult immigrants.

View record

The research undertaken in this thesis facilitated an examination of the dominant discourses contained in several disability policy documents, the ideological underpinnings driving the discourses and the influence of particular models of disability. This investigation demonstrated that there were in fact two dominant discourses common to all the policy texts, namely a discourse of Independence and a discourse of Employability. These evolved from a status of being overtly referenced within the policy texts to becoming an underlying “given” or “truth”. While the language of various models of disability were used in the texts, there is little evidence to suggest that any particular model had any singular influence. Rather, the use of the language of various models of disability appeared to be “tactical” in nature, and used simply to enhance the legitimacy of the particular discourses or arguments being presented. As the texts appeared to be grounded within a neoliberal policy orientation, the use of the language of the models, particularly the social model of disability, was of value in providing legitimacy to concepts that are in many ways antithetical to some of the core precepts of the models. Lastly, the analysis suggests that the actors with the greatest degree of power and influence during the drafting and implementation of the policy texts remained government officials, and the influence of people with disabilities or their advocates was at best subordinate, or in many cases nonexistent. Through this type of research, policy researchers, advocates and impacted individuals with disabilities who endure the effects of policy, have powerful tools with which to expose these dominant discourses. Often these dominant discourses have evolved into unspoken and taken for granted "truths". Foregrounding such discourses can facilitate the development of counter discourses or strategies to negate or at least minimize the negative impacts that result from policy and program decisions grounded in these discourses. Such a capacity could go a long way in leveling the playing field, and at least to some degree equalize the power differential between government and “others” when presented with skillfully written and often dissembling policy texts.

View record